


Circular Fixes

by Jade_II



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28557138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_II/pseuds/Jade_II
Summary: River Song saves Donna Noble. Donna Noble saves River Song.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song, Tenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	1. Part A

**Author's Note:**

> Not a new fic. Just an old one I wanted to save from LiveJournal :)

Donna Noble blinks.  
  
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I’m very very clever again now, but how are you out here and not in there?” She frowns. “Or is this a past version of you? In which case, disregard what I just said, big mouth, you know me, except you might not yet.”  
  
River Song smiles enigmatically. “You got me out,” she says. “Can’t tell you the details – spoilers, you know. Hasn’t happened for you yet.” She tilts her head. “But thanks in advance.”  
  
Then she taps the vortex manipulator on her wrist and is gone, leaving Donna alone with the innermost workings of CAL’s Doctor Moon. Couldn’t materialise inside the Library itself, of course; the Vashta Nerada might still be around, and probably very very hungry by now. But how is she supposed to _leave?_  
  
Never mind that, she tells herself suddenly. Where will she _go_?  
  
Because all of a sudden, the universe is at her feet again, and oh, where to start?  
  
 _Start with finding a way off this moon,_ she tells herself firmly, and looks around. The Doctor Moon is a feat of complex technology; there must be something here that she can use. It has a teleport, she knows, and—  
  
Donna is struck by a thought, and runs to the nearest interface.  
  
She didn’t know she could do this last time she was here, and the Doctor probably wouldn’t have thought of it, wrapped up in the loss of River as he had been, and – and actually, what exactly did River mean by ‘you got me out?’ As in she, Donna, somehow got her data ghost out of the mainframe and put in back into a physical body? How the hell is she supposed to do that, where would she get the body from, for starters, she saw that chair, nothing left that was remotely viable, probably not even enough for a DNA sample –  
  
Anyway. Plenty of time to work that out later. Right now, she is looking for somebody else.  
  
See, when she was here before all she could search for was his name, and there was no guarantee that the one she had known him by was even his real name, but now, _now_ she has the know-how to search for the digital pattern his physical characteristics would have made in the teleport buffer, and so it should in fact be possible for her to ascertain once and for all whether he was real or not, and he _has_ to be really because CAL wouldn’t have wasted space on a fictional character like that when she was already so overstretched and – HA.  
  
It’s him. It’s Lee. She’s certain of it.  
  
He’s real, and he was here, and now he’s – well, he was on a transport to Calderon Beta about three years ago, would have got there by now, set up a new life, quite possibly moved on physically and emotionally, but—  
  
Well. Nothing better to start Donna Noble’s new life with than a little quest, right?  
  
  
She bumps into the Doctor on the way, on one of the many planets where she has to change ships, _again_. She’s managed to furnish herself with some fake money to pay for it all, and she’s loving it.  
  
What she loves even more is the look on his face when he sees her.  
  
Funny how with his Timelord mind inside her own she recognises him right off the bat, never mind the fact that he’s regenerated, and she knows instinctively that she mustn’t give away how exactly she is back, here, complete. “Spoilers,” she tells him, thinking of River Song and wondering if that will be enough of a hint for him to work it out himself. He narrows his eyes, but the wheels in his head are still turning for now and he says nothing. “Are you headed anywhere in particular?” he asks.  
  
“Calderon Beta,” she replies, and by the way he looks at her she gets the feeling that she is the one who hasn’t got the whole picture right now.  
  
“Oh really?” he says. “Fancy a lift?”  
  
Donna scoffs. “Like you need to ask, spaceman,” she says, and pushes past him into the TARDIS.  
  
  
As it turns out, Lee is easy to find. She checks the record of the ship that brought him from the Library and finds him on the passenger list, complete with forwarding address. The address itself gives her a moment’s pause, it being a tourist attraction rather than a dwelling, but she goes anyway and finds him pruning the big tree growing out of a cliff that is for some reason so special.  
  
“Hi Lee,” she says, grinning, and he is so surprised that he almost falls to his death. Thankfully Donna’s added Timelord lets her react quickly enough to grab him, pulling him onto the platform she is standing on but then losing her balance, ending up in a heap underneath him.  
  
She really doesn’t mind at all.  
  
  
They stay on Calderon Beta for a bit, then travel for a while – there’s always work in space for someone who’s good with plants like Lee is, and Donna is good at most things.  
  
There is one thing, though, that she’s not as good at as she would like.  
  
She still has no idea how to save River Song.  
  
So far she has thought through variations on two dozen possibilities, even going so far as to research technology and equipment for one or two of them... and that is where she keeps failing.  
  
In theory it should be simple – create a new body, download River’s consciousness into said body, Bob’s you’re uncle.  
  
If River had an uncle called Bob, that is. That’s one of the problems – Donna hardly knows anything about her. If she knew about any relatives she might have, for instance, it might be easier to get a sample of her DNA. She looked the same, after all, so the solution has to be some kind of copy of her own body. Her burnt-to-a-crisp, useless body.  
  
There has to be a way to do it, because clearly she _did_ do it, and if she doesn’t then River isn’t going to be around to fix her, Donna, and it will all just be a big timey-wimey mess.  
  
With a child on the way now, Donna really hasn’t got time for timey-wimey messes.  
  
Thankfully, she has a breakthrough.  
  
The ship they currently call home – for now, but they’re hoping to get back to Lee’s family on Calderon Beta before the baby arrives – the ship is flying past good old Earth and is docking just past the moon for refueling.  
  
Donna and Lee take a walk on Luna, and Donna snoops through the public databases – and, surreptitiously, the not-so-public – as is her habit.  
  
And she finds River Song’s medical records.  
  
There’s nothing as complex as a DNA scan, but there is one small, vital piece of information that Donna can’t help but feel she would have made a big, big mess of things without.  
  
River Song has two hearts.  
  
Which means that River Song’s consciousness will not just fit into any old body. Because if River Song has the mind to match the hearts, then she will burst out of a normal human body just like Donna had almost burst out of hers. Which means, basically, that River Song needs a body like Donna’s.  
  
...So how come she still looked like _her_?  
  
It doesn’t come to Donna until she is screaming so hard her throat will be raw for days and she is contemplating the meaning of life, because that’s what you do to distract yourself from the trials of childbirth when you’ve got a brain that thinks a million thoughts a minute.  
  
The answer, as it turns out, is behind her.  
  
The Doctor’s daughter. Jenny; the progeneration machine – _that’s_ how you make a Timelord body. And if she can cut in before the machine actually generates said body, she can reprogram it just a bit to look like River. Well, close. Now that she thinks about it, she thinks perhaps her eyes _were_ a shade lighter, and perhaps she had lacked a centimetre or so of height – difficult to tell exactly, with that hair, but Donna thinks that actually, thinking about it in more detail, it’s entirely possible that River Song did not look precisely the same as she had the first time they’d met.  
  
Of course this means that most of River Song’s new genes will actually be the same as Donna’s. For some reason, Donna rather likes that thought.  
  
Soon she will have not just one daughter, but two.  
  
  
It’s not that soon, of course – being the mother of a small child does not lend itself to tinkering around with progeneration machines and running off to planets full of monsters, in the past.  
  
But a few years pass, and eventually she accomplishes the tinkering and creates a computer program that she just needs to upload to CAL in order to get River to rematerialise into the physical world.  
  
And then the Doctor drops out of the sky and gives her a lift to the Library and the correct point in time. It’s so convenient that she can’t help but think that somebody must have told him when and where she would need him. She asks, but he just winks and grins. “Spoilers.”  
  
Still, Donna makes a mental note to tell him to pick her up here the next time she sees him.  
  
They materialise inside the Doctor Moon once more and Donna goes to pull open the doors, but the Doctor calls her back. “Take this,” he says, tossing a vortex manipulator at her.  
  
Donna stares. “Aren’t you coming?”  
  
“Can’t,” he says. “We’d be risking River crossing her own timestream. It’s a bit iffy already as it is – she’s asleep just down the hall. Don’t tell her.”  
  
“Right.” Donna blinks. “Okay then, spaceman. Guess I’ll catch you later.”  
  
“Oh, you will.” The Doctor smiles, his eyes suddenly serious. “Thank you, Donna Noble,” he says. “You’re incredible.”  
  
“Yeah.” Donna laughs. “Thanks to you.”  
  
“Nah.” The Doctor shakes his head. “Trust me, Donna. You were incredible long before you met me.”  
  
Donna laughs louder, and steps outside.


	2. Part B

River Song blinks.

She looks down. Hands, like she remembers them – only she thinks her nails are a different shape. Her feet, too, are a bit different; longer, she thinks. Hair... she wraps some around a finger to inspect it. Still the same curls, but she could swear it is a different shade of red than it was before.

“Okay,” she says, looking up to see Donna Noble’s expectant face. “This is... different. But good, I think. And I’ve got a million burning questions about you.”

Donna grins. “Now you know how I felt when you saved me.”

“When I what?”

“Spoilers.” The grin grows wider and Donna tugs at River’s wrist, pressing her hand to a vortex manipulator, and River feels the familiar jolt deep in her insides as they are pulled through the vortex.

When she gets her bearings she is in a child’s bedroom – full of pink furniture and fluffy toys and, apart from Donna and herself, currently unoccupied.

“Where are we?” she asks.

“Home,” says Donna, glancing at the doorway with a fond smile. “My home, not yours – I still don’t know where your home is, actually, but you’re free to make your way there if you’re so inclined.” She unstraps the vortex manipulator from her wrist and hands it to River. “All yours.”

River accepts it wordlessly. She is desperately in need of a moment to process all this, but it’s clear she’s not going to get it just yet. “Thank you,” she says.

“No problemo,” Donna replies. “Just remember, you’ve got to do the same for me.” A child’s shriek echoes up from elsewhere in the house and she turns again to the door. “I’m gunna go,” she says after a moment, flashing a grin. “Good luck. I’m glad I could help.”

River smiles as Donna leaves, then contemplates the vortex manipulator in her hands.

She really doesn’t know where to go.

She can’t stay here, though, can’t intrude on her unexpected rescuer, so she straps the device to her wrist and makes a quick jump to the street outside.

It’s... oddly familiar.

Not the street itself, but the architecture of the yellow stone buildings, the smell of the air, the language of the words spoken by passers-by and emblazoned over the shop fronts.

Calderon Beta, she realises with a start, and promptly bursts into tears.

River finds a bench, eventually, in a quiet little nook on a hill where she can hopefully pull herself together, but she is finding it rather difficult, because apart from the magnificent view of the ocean she can also see the cliff face and that infernal tree from here. But it’s only a small island, of course; you must be able to see the tree from everywhere.

Why has she ended up here, of all places?

And, more importantly, what the hell is she supposed to do next?

It’s all very well being suddenly free from the Library – and it really was sudden; she barely had time to say goodbye. But she hasn’t made any plans for this eventuality, and now here she is with nothing but a vortex manipulator and the clothes on her back. Besides which, if anyone was going to rescue her she would have expected it to be the Doctor, and the fact that it was not worries her.

Because she’s fairly convinced that he must have thought she was dead the whole time she knew him; the way he kept putting off their visit to the Singing Towers is a clue to that, looking back, and he was definitely not young when he finally agreed to take her. So even if she finds him, unless she’s very very lucky she’s not going to be able to tell him about this. She really can’t count on that kind of luck, though, especially with the back-to-front tendency their lives took on towards the end.

Or what she had thought was the end. It’s rather overwhelming, actually, to suddenly have a life stretching out before her again. A life in which she apparently saves Donna Noble from her metacrisis, something she wouldn’t even have thought was possible.

Abruptly, River stands. Pull yourself together, she tells herself. First things first: protection, food and shelter.

Thankfully, she still has some favours she can call in.

Psychic paper is first on her list; anything else can follow much more easily from there. UNIT has some stashed away, she knows, and they still owe her payment for her help in resolving a stand-off with the Nestene Consciousness; so she goes to 21st-century London to collect.

She can have her payment, she is told, but she’ll have to talk to Colonel Mace first, who is out in the field. The soldier smirks as he tells her this, but River smirks back and arrives in the Colonel’s mobile headquarters before he’s even been told that she’s coming. He starts when he sees her.

“Miss Song, there is a procedure for entering our headquarters,” he admonishes.

“I’m sure there is,” she says. “What’s the procedure for me to get some psychic paper?”

He frowns. “I’ll have to authorise it through the proper channels.”

“Then can you do so, pretty please? I haven’t got all day.” That is a complete lie – she can have all day twice if she wants to. But she never has had much patience for bureaucracy.

The Colonel harrumphs, but turns to make a call. River drums her fingers on her leg and looks around.

The equipment is all fairly standard, really; she’s sure the Colonel would beg to differ, but it’s difficult to be impressed with this sort of stuff when you’ve seen how it evolves even ten years down the line. There are bright monitors showing various exterior views – she looks at them for landmarks, testing herself, seeing if she could determine their location from the images alone.

One image distracts her instantly, though.

It’s the Doctor.

Young Doctor, the Doctor with Donna Noble and... Martha Jones, she thinks. And they are heading right this way.

“Is this going to take long?” she demands, tapping her fingers more nervously now.

The Colonel barks something into the phone and hangs up. “It’s done,” he tells her. “You can pick your payment up back at the base.”

“Thank you,” she says, giving him a little curtsey, and reaches for her vortex manipulator before hesitating. The Doctor will be able to tell if she uses it right before he walks in, and besides—

The door opens and Martha leads the Doctor and Donna inside. Clenching her jaw, River bows her head and manoeuvres around them towards the exit.

None of them take any notice of her whatsoever.

River swipes a gun from UNIT while she is there, just to make herself feel better. The weight of it strapped against her thigh is reassuring somehow as she takes a walk along the Thames, willing the cold wind to chase the Doctor from her head.

It was bad enough, really, that he didn’t know her when she met him in the Library. Seeing versions of him who haven’t even experienced that yet is just going overboard, she feels, suddenly angry at him, or the universe, or both, and she stops and clenches her fists and brings them down sharply on the grey stone wall which separates her from the water.

She suspected for a long time that his first meeting with her would be her last – and as it turns out, it sort of wasn’t, but she thinks this might be worse. Because what if it keeps happening? What if they are still back-to-front, and she keeps stumbling across younger and younger versions of him and has to go out of her way to avoid him? She would rather not see him at all.

Of course what she really wants is for her Doctor to turn up and whisk her away, but the chances of that are slim to none so there’s no point dwelling on it.

River hits her fists against the wall a few more times. Then she exhales purposefully and walks away.

She’s still got some money in an account in 1969 from when she was hunting Silence all over the United States, so that is her next stop – it’s possible she can access it from 2009, but it would be a big hassle and involve a lot of lies, so going back to 1969 seems the smarter choice. Rather than risk meeting herself she decides to do things the long way around and arrange an international transfer from London.

She regrets it as soon as she sees the look on the bank clerk’s face and wonders if perhaps getting the money in the 21st century mightn’t have been easier after all, but she grins and bears it through all the phone calls and paperwork, and by the end of it she’s got a nice sum of money stashed away in her handbag.

She checks into a hotel, then hunts around the local pawn shops for gold and for jewels. A few hours in and she is really wishing for one of her old bags, the ones that were bigger on the inside, but she can’t go back to her old life and get them now that she’s supposed to be dead. She is too wary of paradoxes.

Of course, if the Doctor were here he would probably—

River starts, staring at two people crossing the road in front of her.

The Doctor is here.

He’s with Martha Jones, though, which means he can’t know her yet, and she ducks backwards and into an alleyway as they hurry past, talking about things going ding when there’s stuff.

River’s hearts are beating too fast and she is having trouble breathing, and not for the first time does she wonder what exactly Donna has done to her. Because clearly it’s her body that’s the trouble and not the fact that she man she loves has just walked past without giving her a second glance, for the second time in as many days.

Clearly.

She forces herself to take a deep breath, steps back into the sunny street and continues on her way.

She has to buy a bigger bag, in the end, to carry all her loot. Then she travels back in time a hundred years and looks up Vastra.

Unfortunately, the lizard lady doesn’t know her yet.

“Look,” says River, dodging a swipe of her long tongue. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Clearly it’s too early, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Now that you’ve seen me?” snarls Vastra, advancing through the evening mist. “I doubt that. Oh, I doubt that very much.”

River hefts her bag into a more secure position on her shoulder. “Well, this is just great,” she mutters. Then she turns and runs, but Vastra’s tongue darts out again and wraps around her ankle, pulling her feet out from under her, and she loses her grip on the bag as her face hits the dirt.

“Ow,” she mutters, and then it gets worse as she is dragged backwards and her cheek scrapes painfully along the ground.

She’s got her gun, but it is not at all period appropriate, quite aside from the fact that she really doesn’t want to do Vastra any permanent harm. So instead she grabs a big fat gold medallion from the pile of stuff spilling from her bag and hurls it at the Silurian’s face.

She thinks she hears something break, but she quickly decides that she doesn’t care as the grip around her ankle slackens and she manages to clamber to her feet. Grabbing the bag and ignoring the rest of the spilled contents, she legs it.

This time, thankfully, she gets away.

She dodges and weaves through a few more darkening streets until she comes to a railway track; a train is approaching slowly, obviously still gaining steam after departing the station, and River grins.

Boarding the train at this speed is easy, even in the slightly cumbersome dress she is wearing; she finds an empty compartment and stays onboard until the train reaches its final destination, flashing her psychic paper in lieu of a ticket. When she disembarks she finds that she has a choice of two connecting trains – one back to London, or one which will take her farther West, to Cardiff.

River doesn’t hesitate for long before choosing the second option, and she climbs aboard in the usual fashion this time, settling into a seat just as the guard is passing.

He wishes her a Merry Christmas, tipping his hat, and River starts. She’s sure she should have noticed the date, but apparently not. “Merry Christmas to you too, sir,” she manages, and finds herself sighing once the guard has gone on his way. She gets up and borrows a newspaper from a gentleman in the next compartment, just to be sure, because for some reason she can’t quite believe it.

For the rest of the train ride she sits and gazes out at the dark, allowing herself the rare indulgence of melancholy. It is Christmas Eve, and she is alone on a train hundreds of years before her birth.

Christmas wasn’t something they did in the Library’s mainframe – not a custom observed in that particular corner of the universe, and the way time passed there made it difficult to mark dates, anyway. So River’s last Christmas was, in fact, at her parents’ house, in 2011, and before that she did 2025, and the year before she spent the day with just the Doctor, and...

Well. The point is, River Song has not spent Christmas alone in a very long time.

And life after death is turning out to be rather lonely.

She could send the Doctor a message, of course – easily, with her psychic paper. But the memory of the last time she did so holds her back. It can’t be worse than that, she supposes, but... But, she has to admit, she is quite irrationally afraid that he just would not come. That her message would get lost in the ether somehow; that his first meeting with her really was her last, and no matter that she’s got a real body again now.

And if that is true, she really doesn’t want to find out just yet.

Hers is the last train to pull into Cardiff General that night, and she steps out onto the platform and into the midnight air. She asks another disembarking passenger if she can recommend a hotel, then parts company from her and follows the directions she’s been given through Cardiff’s chilly streets.

Suddenly she hears a scream in the distance, and moments later the sound of running feet echoing behind her. The runners pay her no heed as they pass, but River stops when she sees them, finding herself unable to move enough muscles even to laugh or to cry.

It’s the Doctor, with a younger face still, and Rose Tyler.

River stands there for a long time, the cold creeping into her bones, and tries and fails to restart her brain.

Is this going to happen to me every day?, she wonders. Is she so connected to the Doctor that she will keep finding him even when she is desperately trying not to?

She is beginning to think that her resurrection is some kind of cosmic mistake, that Donna was meddling too deeply in the affairs of the universe when she brought her back. Why else would she still be seeing the Doctor in this dreadful, back-to-front fashion? It’s as if that’s the only way they can coexist in time and space now; side by side but forever going in opposite directions.

River is beginning to think she might rather still be dead.

She finds the hotel eventually, along with a grumpy night porter who brightens up considerably when she offers him a gold necklace as a tip. The room he shows her to is adequate, given the date, and as she has nothing better to do she stashes her bag under the bed, strips out of her period clothing and climbs between the cold sheets with a tired sigh.

She dreams that the Doctor and Rose break into the hotel during a breakneck chase in pursuit of some terrifying monster or another, and they run right through her room without noticing her. River is furious, and jumps out of bed to grab the Doctor by the collar of that leather jacket he is wearing and demand an explanation as to why he is doing this to her. Why can’t he leave her alone?

Why can’t he be older and come back and love her?

In her dream this leads to incredible, angry sex, and when she wakes up on Christmas morning she is crying.

“Sod this,” she mutters to herself. She stands, gets dressed, and hauls her bag over her shoulder. She can’t sell this stuff on Christmas Day anyway; why has she even stayed this long?

River sets her vortex manipulator to jump forward a couple of days and activates it.

When she arrives in the future there is a couple having sex on the bed.

River raises an eyebrow. She would have thought, after the night porter’s change of demeanour, that he wouldn’t have given the room to anyone else just because she’d been absent for a day or two. Still, she thinks dismissively, it’s not as though she needs it any more.

The woman notices her then and her screams take on a decidedly less elated tone, so River sighs and lets herself out.

There is a gentleman walking down the corridor in the other direction, dressed for summer. River frowns.

When she steps out into the street the bright sunshine makes it clear that it is no longer even remotely close to Christmas. River gives a gold coin to an astonished paper boy and checks the date.

23 August, 1870.

Well, that’s not good.

She clearly needs to take a look at her vortex manipulator, but before she does so she sells all her gold and jewels – what a relief, to be rid of their cumbersome weight – and opens a bank account with the proceeds, which should grow nicely in the next couple of millennia; she will have more money than she took out in 1969, that is certain. She makes sure to leave specific instructions with regard to persons withdrawing money in the future, and then leaves with only a reasonably sized wad of cash on her person.

She uses it to buy a screwdriver, finds a corner of a quiet street where she should be unobserved and begins to unscrew the casing of her vortex manipulator. She might not be able to fix whatever the problem is using only the primitive tools available here, but at least she can take a look at—

The vortex manipulator activates of its own accord, and all of a sudden River finds herself in the middle of a rainstorm, in the middle of the night, goodness knows where.

“Great,” she says to herself, throwing the screwdriver to the ground in frustration.

Then she rolls her eyes and picks it back up, using it to reattach the casing. It won’t do for the manipulator’s workings to get wet, after all.

River stashes the screwdriver and the vortex manipulator in her handbag and takes a look around.

She’s in a residential street, probably in Britain in the 20th or 21st century, though there are a few copycats scattered throughout time and space. A look at the nearest car’s number plate makes her fairly certain that this is the original, but she would really like some clues as to a more precise time and place. She could be in Leadworth, for all she knows, about to run into her younger self, or—

...Or about to run into the Doctor.

The TARDIS is parked just down the road.

River’s hearts leap into her throat when she sees her, and she is running towards the old blue box before she even knows what she is doing. It could be another, still younger version of the Doctor who is here, of course, but the temptation is too great to bear and River is reasonably certain that the TARDIS will do her best to prevent any terrible paradoxes.

She splashes to a halt in the puddle by the doors, and her hands shake as she pushes them open.

The control room is empty.

River lets out a shivering breath, allowing some of the tension to leave her body. She can hide, then; the Doctor will not see her unless the TARDIS lets him do so.

This control room is not one she has seen before, which means the Doctor probably is young – or much, much older, but she doubts that. She checks their location before she leaves the room: they are in Chiswick, 2009. Possibly the same Doctor she saw at UNIT, then. She tries not to let that dishearten her, because at least the TARDIS knows her. The TARDIS always knows her.

River trails a hand along the wall in thanks.

She doesn’t quite know where she’s going and the TARDIS doesn’t deign to tell her, so River keeps following the corridor and hoping that there’s a hot bath and a change of clothes at the end of it.

Instead, she finds herself back in the control room.

The Doctor looks up from the console, his face lit oddly by the blue-green light which emanates from it, and they both freeze.

It is him; it’s number Ten, looking as wet and bedraggled as she and just as surprised. No companions in sight – only him, and somehow she knows that there is nobody making tea in the kitchen or asleep in a bedroom either. At this moment he is as alone as she is.

“River,” he says, eyes wide, and she can’t help a little gasp when he utters her name.

“You recognise me,” she states dumbly, and her feet carry her towards him of their own accord.

He pauses, staring at her just as much as she is staring at him, for which she is grateful. “Yes,” he says eventually. “We’ve met.”

“How many times?” she asks as she rounds the console, trying to keep her voice from wavering.

He looks down. “Just the once.”

“...Oh.” And she can’t say any more than that, she realises, because of course she knows exactly which meeting he is talking about but she can’t let on that she’s been there and done that, because of course everything he experienced with her in her past was coloured by that first meeting and what had happened to her then.

She made him promise her not to change one line of their lives together and she can’t promise him anything but the same, however much it hurts. She just can’t take the risk.

So, instead, she kisses him.

He is startled, she can tell, but he doesn’t pull away and it’s incredible how grateful she is just for that. She ventures a hand on the shoulder of his sodden shirt and then all of a sudden feels his at her waist

River shivers, and her eyes sting and she whimpers into his mouth. She hasn’t kissed him in this body before, though she did see this version once or twice before the Library. In fact, she vaguely recalls a long-ago kiss with his Eleventh self which he had claimed was his first, and she wonders if she is rewriting history by doing this or if he just meant it was his first in that body; or, of course, he could have just been lying. Rule One, a familiar refrain in her head.

He is kissing her now, she realises; he is suddenly an active participant in this, whatever this is or may become, and he is stepping closer and scraping his teeth across her lips and she wonders just when this is for him, what exactly has happened to make him react this way. She doesn’t know this Doctor so well, of course, but this cannot have been a normal day for him or he would have asked questions by now, she is sure.

Perhaps, for once, she has arrived exactly where they both need her to be.

River raises a hand to clutch at his other shoulder, cold water seeping from the material between her fingers even as his body heat seems to be steaming between them. He is bonier than she is used to, a bit taller, but somehow the taste of his mouth on hers is still the same as it always was. It is wonderful and terrible at the same time, because he is and isn’t the man she loves and that contradiction makes her want to both run a mile and never stop kissing him until he is hers.

It’s strange, the way he is kissing her with a different mouth but still the same way he always has – he has always liked to use his teeth, but now of course his teeth are different, and she thinks his tongue is longer and narrower but he is running it across the roof of her mouth in the same pattern she knows so well, and she wants to cry but she knows if she does he will stop and if he does that she might die. Because there have been so many days when she has been convinced that she would never get to touch him again, and now that she is, instead of rejoicing in being wrong she is just afraid this will truly be the last time, and she doesn’t want it to ever ever end.

River pulls him still closer, until he is pressed up against her hard enough for the water in her clothes to start running down her skin underneath them, little droplets creeping between her breasts and over her hips like caresses from icy fingers. The Doctor turns then, pushing her into the console and raising a hand to grasp at the back of her head, burrowing his fingers into the frazzled curls she has pinned up in the Victorian stlye and pulling them back.

She has to gasp then, breaking the kiss, and the Doctor’s mouth moves seamlessly to her jawbone and behind her ear to trail hot kisses down her neck. Somehow River feels that words would break the spell, so she does not speak as she runs her hands over the shirt which is clinging to his chest and strokes his tie – not a bowtie, it strikes her suddenly, and she has to get rid of it right now because she does not want useless thoughts like that in her head at the moment.

He looks surprised when she pulls roughly at the knot, cursing the way the water has swollen the material and made it tighter. She manages eventually to loosen it though, and the Doctor reaches to pull it over his head before cupping her face and kissing her again, harder this time, and she takes the way he is pressing his erection into her hipbone as invitation to continue undressing him.

His buttons, too, are made more difficult to work by the sodden state of his shirt, and she gives up in frustration after three of them, yanking the shirt apart the rest of the way and sliding her hands underneath and across his skin. The damp material across the backs of her hands makes her shiver involuntarily as he pushes against her again, causing more water to trickle out of her clothing between them. River herself is really not dressed for being undressed in a reasonable fashion – the Victorians were far too fond of layers, she has long been aware. The Doctor is valiantly fiddling with the hooks and eyes at the front of her dress, but she pulls his hands away gently, pressing them over her breasts instead. She had planned to work on his trousers next, but the feel of him touching her even through all that fabric is too much of a thrill for her not to savour it for a moment. River closes her eyes and her breath catches in her throat when he grips her tighter, caressing her through her dress – and he hasn’t questioned the dress, she notices, despite its very definite anachronism. But then, his older self always did enjoy it when she was dressed for the wrong period. Timelord kinks, she thinks fondly, opening her eyes as she slips her fingers under his waistband. Her fingers brush against his hard length before she reaches to unbutton him and he hisses – the first sound louder than a gasp that either of them has made, she realises. For some reason that makes her chuckle; she smiles, raising a hand to his face to reassure him while using the other to work his trousers down his legs. The damned water is making them stick and she huffs in frustration, kneeling down to yank at them; then it is his turn to chuckle and she glares up at him, but clearly he finds the angle amusing because it only makes him chuckle harder.

He looks so young when he laughs.

She finally manages to pull his trousers and his underwear all the way to his ankles and he kicks them off along with his shoes, taking her hands in his and pulling her to her feet, and he smiles at her. It’s only a small smile, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards, but it reaches his eyes and oh, she does love him, even this young.

If only she could tell him that.

She kisses him again instead, less hurriedly this time, and then pushes him gently backwards, vaguely intending to search for some kind of flat surface. They find one sooner than expected when he manages to step on her skirts, sending them both tumbling to the floor.

The Doctor laughs again, full-heartedly now and she can’t help but join him, laying her head on his chest as they both giggle helplessly. She moves up to plant more kisses on his lips, grinning as she does so, and slowly manages to shuffle her knees up his sides so that she is bending over him, kissing across his shoulders and down his chest before returning to his mouth. She pulls away, contemplating him, and finally dares to speak.

“I’m going to need some help getting these skirts out of the way,” she tells him, and they both burst into giggles again even as he reaches to comply.

A lot more knee shuffling is required before her skirts are situated in such a way as to allow him any access, and then a lot of fumbling of his hands between them because she can’t reach properly before she finally manages to sink over him, and they sigh at the same time.

It isn’t easy to move under all her sodden clothing, but River does her best, and the Doctor reaches for her hips and she steadies her hands on his chest and they work it out, they work it out, and hmm, River closes her eyes and suddenly they’re not giggling any more.

She doesn’t quite know what she was expecting when she stepped into the TARDIS, but she’s fairly certain it wasn’t this. It’s probably the nicest surprise she’s had since she was brought back to life.

River leans forward to get a better angle, gasping again when she achieves it, moving faster and watching the Doctor’s face underneath her. His eyes are closed, his mouth open and taking ragged breaths, and she wonders briefly if he isn’t thinking of somebody else. She could look inside his head, if she wanted to – but no, she mustn’t. He doesn’t know yet that she’s not quite human.

Besides, in a way she is thinking of somebody else too.

He is opening his eyes and looking at her again now, and his hand is pushing her skirts aside to run along the inside of her thigh and between her legs, fingers finding their way through the open crotch seam of her drawers – definitely the most practical feature of her clothing – and pressing against her clit, and it is her turn to close her eyes as he pinches and strokes her, and she cries out and he rubs from side to side faster and harder and then her orgasm overcomes her, coursing through her body from the inside out, and she is suddenly light-headed with the tightness of her corset and rain-soaked dress, and falls forward with a sigh.

He’s not quite there, but there’s no way she can get herself upright again so she grabs him by the arms and rolls them over, keeping her grip as she lays back underneath him and rides out the aftershocks of her climax even as he is reaching his. He shouts when he comes, surprising her, and she smiles at him as he slows his movements. He doesn’t collapse quite as dramatically as she, instead lowering himself over her gently and pressing a soft kiss to her lips before rolling over to lie by her side. River smiles again, looking up at the unfamiliar ceiling of her old familiar TARDIS.

They stay there on the floor of the control room for a long time, their fingers intertwined, before River realises that she is shivering and the Doctor laughs and pulls her to her feet, promising her dry clothes and tea.

It’s almost like being home.

River takes a hot shower and finds some of her own clothes in the wardrobe, though of course she doesn’t divulge that little detail to the Doctor. He isn’t in the control room when she returns, but she finds his sonic screwdriver in a pocket of the clothes still littering the floor and sets to work trying to figure out what’s wrong with her vortex manipulator.

She sits in the jump seat and does a scan. The problem is nothing so simple as a loose circuit, unfortunately, but the readings are definitely not what they should be.

“A vortex manipulator!” the Doctor’s voice says, and he enters the room carrying two steaming cups of tea, which he sets down on the console across from her. “Are you a Time Agent, Professor Song?”

River laughs, standing to reach for a teacup. He is watching her carefully; contemplating the manipulator clutched with his screwdriver in her other hand.

“Who are you?” he says eventually, shaking his head with a small smile.

“Spoilers, sweetie,” she replies, smiling back, and it is the first time in years that she has enjoyed answering that question.

“The TARDIS knew just how you liked your tea,” he remarks, reaching for the other cup.

River shrugs. “What were you doing in Chiswick, Doctor?” she asks. She thinks she knows, but she would like to be sure.

His expression darkens, and she knows she is right before he speaks. “Dropping off a good friend of mine,” he replies, looking away. Then his brow furrows and he looks up at her again. “What were you doing there?”

“I was dumped there, quite unceremoniously and unexpectedly,” River explains, holding up her vortex manipulator. “I’m not quite sure what’s wrong with it.”

The Doctor puts down his teacup. “May I?”

River nods her assent and he takes the screwdriver as well, performing the same scan with it as she has just done. He doesn’t comment on the fact that she’s helped herself to his screwdriver, but frowns, moving the manipulator to the console, and begins working with the scanner there.

River watches, drinking her tea.

“There’s an error in the software,” the Doctor declares after a moment, using his screwdriver on it again. “The coordinate settings aren’t focussed on the timestream of the wearer, they’re... shifted a bit.”

Shifted to you, River surmises. Well, at least it wasn’t fate or destiny or whatever that was causing her to unwillingly be following his younger selves around. She wonders if he can tell who exactly the manipulator has been focussed on.

“It’s fixed,” he tells her, handing it back.

“Thanks,” she says. She straps it back on her wrist.

The Doctor has shoved his hands into his pockets when she looks up again. “Somebody has to have done that deliberately,” he says. “There’s no way it would happen on its own.”

Someone like Donna? River wonders. Where did she get the manipulator from, anyway? Aloud, all River can say is, “I’ll bear that in mind.”

The Doctor nods. “So, Professor Song,” he says brightly, pulling out his hands and rubbing them together. “Where to?”

She asks to be dropped off a couple of millennia later, and she can tell he is disappointed that she’s leaving – well, of course he is, he’s just lost Donna and he doesn’t want to be alone. Neither does River, truth be told, but she can’t stay, not when he’s so young. Too many secrets she would have to keep.

Besides, she still has to work out what to do about Donna.

“When will I see you again?” the Doctor asks, leaning in the narrow blue doorway.

River cups his cheek in her hand and smiles. “Oh, soon enough.” Asgaard, probably, she thinks. “And Donna,” she says, turning, “will be okay.”

He can’t know just how okay, of course, but hopefully her words will give him some comfort.

She walks away, and it’s a long time before she hears the TARDIS disappearing behind her.

The first thing River does is to empty her two-thousand-year-old bank account, whose contents have grown quite nicely in the meantime. She rents a flat this time, fed up with hotel rooms, and settles down to try and work out how to fix Donna.

It’s not easy.

River travels to all of time and space’s best libraries looking for information that might help, but there is nothing quite like what happened to Donna Noble in any of recorded history. She wonders if it would have been different before the time lock, if in another universe she might have simply been able to take her to some sort of Timelord specialist who saw a dozen such cases every day and get her fixed up right as rain.

No – that’s probably going a bit far. Besides which, the Doctor remembers Gallifrey and the Timelords and a paltry memory wipe was the best he could come up with; one which wouldn’t even hold against the smallest of triggers. But if that was the Doctor’s very best solution, how the hell is River supposed to find anything better?

The answer, as it turns out, is behind her.

She is dreaming about the Library, which is not an uncommon occurrence since her resurrection. It’s a nasty dream, a nightmare where she deletes her own memories of the Doctor and then, when she comes back to life, it’s not just he who doesn’t recognise her. They meet constantly but they never speak, forever anonymous to each other, and this time when she dies she dies alone.

And wakes up crying.

This too is not uncommon.

River hauls herself out of bed and into a cold shower immediately, forcing herself to wake up completely, but the dream lingers in her mind even as she steps out and pulls a dressing gown around herself, padding into the little kitchen to make breakfast.

The morning sun streams through the window as she eats, perched on a stool by the counter top and alternating between bites of toast and sips of coffee. Much of the counter is piled high with books, and River curses when she almost spills her coffee on them. She’s read through them all anyway, she really should just take them back to the library...

River Song blinks.

Back to the library.

...Back to the Library.

Ever so slowly, she allows herself to grin.


	3. Part C

Donna Noble blinks.

“Sorry,” she says to River, pushing her hair out of her face, only to have the wind blow it right back again. “The funeral was yesterday, I know I put the wrong date on one of the e-mails...” She pauses, her eyes focussing properly on River for the first time. “I know you, don’t I? Were you one of my grandad’s carers?”

“...Yes,” River decides after a moment. It’s as good an answer as any. She looks down at the fresh grave with its shiny new headstone. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Not half as sorry as me,” Donna says with a quavering laugh, following her gaze. “No. Sorry. Shouldn’t joke.” River’s not sure if she’s talking to her or to the man under the earth.

And she’s really not sure if this is the right time.

“You were close,” she says. It’s not a difficult deduction; it’s the day after the funeral, after all, and now Donna is the only one here.

“Yeah,” Donna says, nodding quickly. She fishes in her pocket for a hankie and dabs at her eyes. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.”

Donna looks at her again, frowning. “I’m sure I recognise you, but I can’t for the life of me remember—” She blinks rapidly. “Hang on, I—” Donna cuts herself off, pressing a hand to her head.

Dammit. She didn’t think it would happen this quickly.

“Sorry darling,” River says, and kisses her.

Well, there’s no going back now, River thinks, glancing back at the unconscious woman in the rear of the small ship. So this must be the right time to go and get Donna, because River’s gone and done it now. She remembers the house on Calderon Beta; the child’s bedroom, the look on Donna’s face.

“You’re going to be happy,” she promises Donna.

Then she wonders if Donna promised her the same thing.

She docks the ship with one of the Doctor Moon’s airlocks and leaves Donna inside, heading for the nearest computer interface. It’s giving her shivers, being back here, but it must be done. Without Donna Noble, River will have been stuck here all this time anyway.

“River!” says Charlotte’s voice, and she turns down to the interface with a start. “You came back!” the girl says, delight evident in the image of her face on the screen.

“Yes, I did,” River says, managing a smile. “I need your help, actually. Remember Donna Noble?”

“Donna?” She looks surprised. “Yes, of course I do.”

“She’s in the ship I just came off. I need you to...” River pauses, searching for another way to put her request and finding none. “To save her.”

It’s so simple really, River thinks, watching things unfold on the monitor, though it really doesn’t reveal much of the process taking place.

Inside the computer, Donna’s human body is just another set of data that’s been uploaded via the teleporter. Data that can be manipulated by the Doctor Donna’s mind which, in digital form, now has more than enough room to function.

Essentially, Donna is rewriting her own DNA. Human plus Timelord, much like River’s own, and once it is done she can rematerialise back in the physical world with no trace of the metacrisis she experienced.

Well. No trace except her new body and Timelord mind. River wonders how much of the Doctor she will keep – the physical data is not the only information that can be rewritten, as River knows only too well.

There were so many times when she was tempted to rewrite herself, to reprogram herself into someone who could be happier with her fate. To change some personality traits, delete some memories...

But she didn’t. And now here she is.

And, she finds, she very definitely doesn’t want to go back.

Well. That’s something.

Donna materialises a few minutes later, standing blinking a few feet away.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “I’m very very clever again now, but how are you out here and not in there?” She frowns. “Or is this a past version of you? In which case, disregard what I just said, big mouth, you know me, except you might not yet.”

River smiles, appreciating the symmetry between this and the last time she was here. “You got me out,” she says. “Can’t tell you the details – spoilers, you know. Hasn’t happened for you yet.” She tilts her head. “But thanks in advance.”

She activates her vortex manipulator and escapes.

The Ruined Planet of Exenouth has been in a state of ruin for hundreds of years, but remains undiscovered by archaeologists at this point in time. It’s River’s favourite place to come when she wants to be alone.

She lies on a large stone platform and lets the heat of it rise into her skin. The sun beams down from the purple sky, and she closes her eyes.

Donna will be fine, she is sure. The ship River left should get her to the nearest transport hub, and her restored wits will do the rest.

River is not quite so sure about being fine herself.

Now that she’s sent Donna on her way, she has absolutely no idea what she should do next.

She traces patterns on the warm stone with her fingertips, slowly going over her options.

There will always be archaeology teams she can join, of course, almost anywhere in time and space. She could jump forward a few hundred years and be digging in the dirt right next to where she is lying now within a matter of hours – she would have to be careful, though, because she’s already been on two digs on this planet and she doesn’t want to meet herself.

Her younger, happier self.

She could go in search of the young Doctor, she supposes, timelines be damned, but he would probably tell her off. Or the universe would explode, or possibly both.

She could even follow Donna’s example and go and settle down somewhere. Find some likely young man, have some children... except she’s not likely to be genetically compatible with just any young man, and she would probably outlive him.

Nobody can ever quite compare with the Doctor, in any way.

Damn. Now she’s thinking about him again.

River has always known that a day might come when the Doctor would not be a part of her life any more. What she never really considered was how she would know when that time had come.

She’s met one version of him since her resurrection who recognised her. Barely. Three who didn’t.

And not a trace of her Doctor.

So is this it? Is it all over?

The pessimist in her says yes, but she’s never been a pessimist. The optimist says no, of course not, but optimism has never been something she’s indulged in much either.

The realist in her says there’s simply no way to tell, and she thinks that perhaps that’s the worst answer of all.

And then she hears a sound which makes her sit bolt upright, her hearts all of a sudden beating impossibly fast, and she dares to hope that the optimist might have been right.

The TARDIS is standing not ten metres away.

It’s a younger him, the pessimist says, even as River stands hurriedly. He wouldn’t just drop out of the sky like this. That doesn’t happen.

Actually, the optimist points out, it does.

The realist tells the other voices to shut up because the door is opening.

River can’t help but hold her breath.

“Hi honey,” says the Doctor, her Doctor, solid and real and wonderful. “I’m h—“

And River can’t reply because she’s kissing him too hard.

“I missed you,” she tells him later, curled up with him in bed and quite determined to remain so for a long, long time. “I was convinced that I would never see you again.”

“I know the feeling,” he says, his fingers dancing up and down her arm. Bless him, he never could keep still. “After Darillium...” he trails off, looking up at her.

River blinks. “You’ve done Darillium?”

“Ha! And so have you!” The Doctor claps his hands together gleefully. “Oh, I knew it! River,” he declares, pressing his lips to hers hastily, “you’re alive!”

“Yes.” She finds herself laughing. “Yes, I am.”

“How did you do it? It was Donna, wasn’t it? I knew she was hinting at something, she told me I had to pick her up and take her to the Library, which I haven’t done yet, suppose I really should or you probably won’t be here... Oh, but what did she do? You look different – well, mostly the same, still incredible, but a bit different, and you taste different, actually it reminds me a bit of – No...” His eyes widen. “Donna used her own DNA to make you a new body! That’s brilliant, and a bit creepy because now you’re sort of her daughter, so now I’m married to Amy’s daughter and Donna’s daughter and I hope they like each other because—“

She shuts him up with a kiss, and when they come up for air he has calmed down a bit, though he is still grinning like an idiot.

But that’s okay because she is too.

“Hello,” he says brightly.

River laughs, shaking her head at him. “Hello, sweetie.”

They make love again, and River falls asleep next to him for the first time in years.

She is woken by the TARDIS groaning as she dematerialises. The Doctor is gone, and so is her vortex manipulator.

River gets dressed and goes in search of him.

He’s in the console room, whistling happily to himself as he tinkers with the scanner. He looks up with a grin when she approaches. “Hello, dear. Sleep well?”

“Fine, thank you. Did you take my vortex manipulator anywhere nice?” she enquires politely.

The look on his face says it all. “I may have given it away.”

“You gave my manipulator away,” she repeats, folding her arms. “To whom?”

“Oh, to Donna. So she can give it to you.” He licks his lips. “You know, circular causality.”

River feels her eyes widen as realisation dawns.

“You bastard!” she says incredulously. “It was you. You reprogrammed it, you put me through all that! All those versions of you I couldn’t even speak to...”

He deigns to look guilty, at least. “Yes. Sorry about that, but I had to make sure you’d get where you needed to be.”

“Where? In your bed?” Not that they ever made it to the bed, she recalls, but her point stands.

“Yes. No! No, not like that, that’s not—“ He cuts himself off, trying again. “I didn’t know where you got the inspiration for what you did for Donna. I had to make sure everything happened as I remembered it. Circular causality is not something to be taken lightly, River, you know that.”

She sighs. “Yes, alright. I know.”

The Doctor scratches his neck. “Not that I minded having you... not quite in my bed, I must admit.” When he realises she’s not going to slap him, he continues with a grin. “I never do.”

River rolls her eyes, and kisses him just because she can.

* * *

“She’s got your hair,” River says to Donna.

The other woman laughs. “Yeah, that makes two of 'em. Poor kids.” She looks across the grass at the two girls running after Lee, who is valiantly trying to keep a football away from them. “Maybe the next one will be luckier,” she says, rubbing her stomach.

River’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’re pregnant again?”

“Yep.” Donna grins. “Just can’t seem to stop procreating, me. One way or another.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks. You too.”

They both look up then at the sound of the TARDIS appearing on the lawn. “Time to go soon, darling!” River calls, but the smaller girl is already running for the opening doors.

“Daddy!” she squeals, and the Doctor sweeps her into his arms and twirls her through the air, setting her down again with a little pat on the head.

“Well, my love?” River says as he approaches. “Did you set the fairground to rights?”

“Yeah, more or less,” he replies, greeting her with a kiss. “We can safely go there again. They weren’t sure about Donna, though.”

“Watch it, spaceman,” the other woman says good-naturedly. “Now get your blue box out of my garden before the neighbours start asking questions.”

“As you command, madam,” he replies with a mock salute, earning him a slap on the arm.

River gets a hug instead.

The Doctor has recaptured their wayward child, so they say their goodbyes and leave before she can escape. She leads them on a chase around the control room instead, ending when she pulls open the doors and stops in front of the stars.

And life after death is turning out to be rather wonderful.


End file.
